Month: November 2011

I’m against animal testing. And I am so fricking glad to see the happy on these dogs’ faces.

Paraphrased from the site: These beagles have known nothing except the confines of metal cages. They have known no soft human touch, no warm bed, no companionship, no love. They have never been outside or sniffed a tree or grass. ARME got the call that a facility was willing to release them to us after they had been used in several tests. They were picked up on June 8th and now they are all in loving foster homes, and one has already been adopted.

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Neko entered our household at a very strange time. Motlow, our older cat was getting ancient and grumpy and Tam, our “15 lb kitten” was too playful and huge to reasonably be trusted not to break the old man’s bones. The thought was to get Tam a playmate he could tussle with.

Keep in mind that Tam now weighs 22 pounds and while a very sweet natured cat, he wanted to PLAY when he was younger. Notice I don’t use the word smaller. The supposedly year old cat we brought home from the pound was actually only a few months old and grew like we’d irradiated him.

We went to the pound again and there was a very playful black and white cat I thought would do well. My sister saw a puffy small black one and said; I want this one. I was leery. She was quite listless and very light but seemed sweet. From the looks of things she was very young and already been pregnant. Very young. And very small. Keep that it mind. Continue reading “The REAL Neko.”→

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There have been a lot of opinions… well still ARE a lot of opinions… about how an author should promo their own work.

Where is this coming from? Well, I’m sure all of you have heard all of the arguments and / or discussions about the availability of self-pubbing or the increasing presence of indie presses or the powerhouse publishers lack of producing anything outside of the box. I won’t rehash that here. What I would like to touch on is self-promotion.

When should an author do it?

I can tell you what I’m sick of. That would be an author’s every tweet being about their book being on the Kindle or Nook. Some package it in such a way that it’s cute (or they think so). They say things like “Your Kindle is lonely without my novel ABC Lover’s Tangle!”

If I see that on my Twitter stream more than five times, I immediately sniff suspiciously at the author and growl.

Another is RTing a review or opinion without saying thanks. I know. It sounds silly but saying thank you to the person who just said nice things about the author gives the RTing author a pass. You can RT anything all day to me so long as you say thanks to the person who said kudos. Merely posting that you got a review without celebrating it and I get growly. :::grins:::

Okay, I get growly a lot.

So how to self-promote? Because let’s face it, no one’s going to promote an author without some give/take. And Indie presses only do so much.

Seriously, talk to people. Reach out there. Be accessible but not full disclosing. They don’t need to know about your aunt’s gall bladder. But the readers do need to know that you see they are there.

I have a hard time reaching out. Or rather I do reach out but I think I am much more reserved about doing so than others. It amazes me to see people with one book have lively discussion boards. I am not one who does. Not by planning, mind you. I have a discussion board. But it is by no means lively. Someone told me it’s because Dirty Kiss really isn’t a happy discussing book. I sniffed and then cried in a corner.

Okay maybe I sniffed and didn’t cry but I was crying inside! Damn it! :::grins::: Mostly, I know my limitations. I am not a lively discussion group generator. I have fellow authors who are. I am envious of them. That connectivity is fabulous.

So if you can, generate noise about your book and your writing! Get a discussion group. And most of all, talk. Just talk to your readers.

Don’t forget to write though. That’s important. Writing makes new book. They like new books. ::nods::

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I tend towards the macabre. I know. I’ll wait a moment there while you recover from the shock. /sarcasm.

I LOVE this commerical. Sadly, it can’t be shown on television. I understand why. I do. But oh, it hits all the gleeful little fanged dragon buttons inside of me. Just simply a fantastic, lovely commercial.

It would only have been better if they were hot guys.

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I’m not sure when this affliction struck me. Possibly at an early age. You’d think it would be squirrels. My name in Japanese is Risu, which means squirrel. Squirrels are lovely creatures with big puffy tails. And damn it, while I adore them. I even squeed the first time I saw one! Don’t judge. I grew up in Hawai’i. There aren’t any squirrels there. Bunnies just DO it for me.

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I am a bit of a geek. I didn’t think I was but apparently, my geek fu is quite high. I deny this but most of my friends are quick to point out the geekery of my brain. :::sniffs:::

I would refute this but some of them are engineers and if they think you’re geeky then perhaps a bit of it is the truth.

Bastiges.

When I was very young, my grandfather gave me a series of Time-Life books. Some of them had to do with dinosaurs and early mammals. I LOVED those books. Filled up my little Asperger’s heart with a gleeful gleeing thing. Dinosaurs! Funky Saber-toothed things!

I was actually more in love with the pictures but the text was pretty decent. Things and theories have changed over the years but I still have a deep love for the prehistoric.